Chechen genocide

The Chechen genocide refers to the mass casualties suffered by the Chechen people since the beginning of the Chechen–Russian conflict in the 19th century. The term has no legal effect, although the European Parliament recognized the 1944 forced deportation of the Chechens, which killed around a third of the total Chechen population, as an act of genocide in 2004. Similarly, in 2022, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine condemned the "genocide of the Chechen people" by Russia during the First and the Second Chechen Wars.

History

19th century

In 1817, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the Caucasus, General Alexey Yermolov, who had a particular dislike for the Chechens, decides to move the Caucasian fortified line, which served as the southern border of the Russian Empire, from the banks of the Terek to the Chechen lands near the Sunzha River. This led to the Caucasian War of 1817–1864.

The occupation of Sunzha was accompanied by a partial expulsion of the Chechens to the mountains ("to live on St. Anthony's food", in the words of Yermolov). The latter hoped that, having seized the fields and pastures of the Chechens and created hunger among them, because of the lack of land, they would "begin to exterminate each other" better than him or, in any case, will submit to him.

As Yermolov liked to call himself, the "proconsul of the Caucasus" accused the Chechens of attacking the line. "I'd rather leave the desert steppes from the Terek to Sunzha," he said, "than tolerate robberies in the rear of our fortifications." In support of his words, in 1819–1820 he conducted punitive expeditions against a number of villages and razed some of them to the ground.